Tuesday, January 12, 2016

‘GOD WILL BRING DOWN THE RAINS’

Climate
change has brought on a severe drought in the small absolute monarchy of
Swaziland. The solution to the crisis is literally to pray for rain, says the
country’s absolute monarch. No, we need a democratic government that does not
treat its people as enemies, says a young activist, writes
Kenworthy News Media.

In Swaziland,
where two thirds of Swaziland’s population survive on less than a dollar a day,
a lengthy drought has caused an extreme lack of water, subsequent falling crop
yields and the death of thousands of cattle in Swaziland’s rural areas. People
in the rural areas could starve to death if urgent action is not taken, two
local researchers recently stated in the American Journal of Agriculture and
Forestry.

In response
to the increasingly precarious situation, Swaziland’s absolute monarch King
Mswati III, who is one of the wealthiest monarchs in the world, said in a
speech held on Saturday (9 January 2016) that the country does not need an
irrigation system. “We have our irrigation system coming straight from God …
God will bring down the rains to water your fields”, Mswati claimed.

An
insult to the poor
A young Swazi activist whom I shall call Sibusiso says he was very dismayed
when he learnt of the king’s speech. He wishes to remain anonymous because he
fears reprisals in a country where freedom of expression is “severely
restricted in practice” and dissenters and demonstrators “routinely face
violence and arrests by police”, according to Freedom House.

“Mswati is
saying all this at the height of a drought that has hit thousands of
subsistence farmers in the rural areas who rely on erratic rainfall as the only
source of water for their crops and animals. Most of these farmers have lost
their livestock due to lack of rainfall. A sizeable number of Swazi rural
farmers have not ploughed their fields because of the persistent drought”, says
Sibusiso, who has himself grown up in the rural areas.

It is clear
from the speech that the king clearly has no compassion for, or understanding
of, Swaziland’s many poor, he says.

“I have spent
my life in the rural areas where we would break our backs working hard in the
fields and taking care of our livestock to make sure we had enough to eat. We
did all this without any assistance from the government. These rural farmers
and their families are nothing more than cheap labour in the eyes of the king
and his chiefs. They are even expected from time to time to provide manual
labour for them even though they are themselves struggling”.

When
the people awaken from their slumber
The solution to the crisis, says Sibusiso, is thus not only food aid or a more
compassionate absolute monarch, but a truly democratic government that does not
treat its people as enemies.

“A government
that is visionless, as this one is, cannot lead us anywhere, except to a
perpetual cycle of poverty and underdevelopment. Mswati continues to celebrate
the wealth that he has amassed from depriving the ordinary people a decent
life, a decent education, food, health and the right to own land. But when the
people awaken from their slumber and say enough is enough and demand what
rightfully belongs to them it shall be too late for him to redeem himself. The
party shall be over soon”, says Sibusiso.